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Self Defense Is Part of Our Heritage

Stand Your Ground laws that have caught on in many states since 2005 are also called Castle Doctrine laws – referring to the traditional legal concept that a man’s house is his castle. But what does a doctrine that relieves us, in our homes, of the duty to try to flee an intruder’s attack before resorting to force in self defense, have to do with shoot-outs in public streets?

Beginning in the late 19th century, most states extended the previously home-located privilege to anywhere a person has a right to be, influenced by ideals of true manhood on the American frontier.

Stand Your Ground laws were influenced by ideals of true manhood on the American frontier.

So the provisions of legislation like Florida’s, eliminating the duty to retreat from an attacker in public space before killing in self defense, are not in themselves radical departures from what we have traditionally known. Indeed they track the same old move – leveraging the appealing idea of standing one’s ground at home, into any other place a person “has the right to be.”

The real outrages are not actually in the provisions of the new self-defense laws, as nothing in those laws give permission to shoot or refuse to retreat when one isn’t attacked to begin with. The dangers lie rather in incorrect and confused law enforcement perceptions of what the law allows, fueled by the cultural background and emotions that surrounded the laws’ passage.

In a post-9/11 decade of anxiety about securing the “homeland” against attack, it was perhaps unsurprising to see sudden and sweeping preoccupations with self defense against intruders. Tragically, the expansive rhetoric of home protection that gave the new laws such momentum during that time has also made it more likely that a vigilante would perceive the shooting of a black teenager in a gated community as self defense.